3 September 1869 • Buffalo, N.Y. (MS: CtHMTH, UCCL 00345)
I would do it in a minute (especially as I find it impossible to cancel all my appointments & therefore have to go into the field after all), but it will not do, because Mr. Abbott Abbey says I promised to talk in Kingston, & I think I did, though I am not sure of it. I was afraid to promise you, you remember, & so I don’t know what I could have been thinking of when I made the other promise. But you see how it is—I only use one lecture at a time, & therefore cannot talk it to two towns so close together. — IfⒶemendation I talked in either, you see yourself it would have to be for Abbott Abbey in Kingston, & so I’ll keep on undebatable ground & steer clear of both places. I’m sorry, Crane, but if you were in my shoes you would do just as I am doing.1explanatory note
P. S. You have paid for & will receive our Weekly fourteen months—up to Jan. 1, 1871.
A similar apology and explanation may have gone to Henry Abbey about this time. Despite the present refusal and the previous one of 21 August, Crane repeated his request to Clemens within the week.
MS, Cyril Clemens Collection, Mark Twain Memorial, Hartford, Conn. (CtHMTH).
L3 , 330–331; Collector (November 1949), lot I 2269, excerpts.
The MS was sold in 1949 by Walter R. Benjamin Autographs of New York and sold again sometime before 1972 by Paul C. Richards, then of Brookline, Mass. It was eventually acquired by Cyril Clemens, who donated it to CtHMTH in 1985.